


Faithless

by mirawonderfulstar



Series: ready to suffer and ready to hope [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Depersonalization, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, M/M, Protectiveness, Psychological Torture, Rescue, Self-Hatred, Whump, Wing Grooming, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 21:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18060521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: In the aftermath of the apocalypse, Heaven has a test for Aziraphale.A reversal on the "Crowley gets dragged back to Hell" trope.





	Faithless

**Author's Note:**

> i started this in november because i wanted to beat up aziraphale a little bit and finished it in the last two days because somebody on tumblr prompted me to write a dramatic rescue. 
> 
> this is. not what i would call in-character but i Had A Powerful Need

_"who has not asked themself at some time or other: am i a monster or is this what it means to be a person?" —clarice lispector_

* * *

 

Several months had gone by since the world hadn’t ended. Aziraphale and Crowley had been muddling through it as best they could without any idea of what they were meant to be doing now. Thankfully they’d had each other, so the apparent lack of direction in their lives didn’t bother either of them very much.

Or at least, it wasn’t bothering either of them until Aziraphale received his first communique from Heaven in nearly a year.

It was delivered in the form of a tightly furled scroll sealed with both a ribbon and wax and dropped in the mail slot of the bookshop. Aziraphale found it when he went to open around in the late morning and let out a little sniff at the ostentatiousness, a feeling which grew when he opened it to find the exaggerated, swirling calligraphy within. His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened in concern as he actually read the words, and as soon as he finished he went to pour himself a drink, thinking as he did so that he was glad Crowley hadn’t come with him to the shop like he’d offered earlier that morning.

Heaven wanted him back for a bit. They hadn’t specified why, exactly, although Aziraphale thought he had a pretty good idea going off of “concerns about your allegiances” and “evidence of divided loyalties”. Moving in with Crowley had seemed safe enough, given Heaven’s radio silence, but apparently that was not the case.

Aziraphale stared out the window at the cold grey of the winter and then down into his glass, his thoughts churning like the sea, turbulent, threatening to drown him. Really he ought to call Crowley and tell him, just in case, but.  _But_. Aziraphale finished his drink. That would be a bit like admitting defeat, like acknowledging he was afraid he wouldn’t come back. And he was certainly planning on coming back. 

The decision on whether or not to call Crowley was made for him when a beam of light appeared in the center of his shop and the Metatron came to collect him.

 

Aziraphale always managed to forget just how much he disliked being Upstairs until he returned. It was too bright, for one thing. White everything, and the illumination just a touch too fluorescent for his tastes. Oddly sterile. And the architecture. The Metatron was leading him down a series of long, long hallways to their eventual destination, wherever that was, and all Aziraphale could think was that there was no practical reason for there to be an in-between sort of room at all. Time and space didn’t exist up here in the same way they did on Earth and there was nothing stopping them from just… being in the place they needed to be. The hallway was for show, or intimidation. Well, Aziraphale thought, squaring his shoulders, he wasn’t going to be intimidated.

Which was all well and good until the Metatron stopped beside a door that had appeared in the endless expanse of long white wall and gestured for Aziraphale to go in. Aziraphale swallowed, stared up at the Voice Of God, and asked in a slightly wavering voice, “Who am I meeting in there?”

“That is up to you.” The Metatron said, totally unconcerned.

“Is it Gabriel?” Aziraphale asked, crossing his arms. The archangel and the principality had never really got on, and it would be just like Gabriel to have Aziraphale called up here to lecture him about his personal life.

“It is up to you.” The Metatron repeated. They held the door open and looked pointedly at Aziraphale, who sighed and walked into the room.

And blinked in surprise. It was a room about the size and shape of your average sitting room, and it was completely empty. The same blank white walls and ceiling and floor.

Aziraphale turned back to the door, frowning, but it was already closing behind him. He strode back towards it and made to push it open but it winked out of existence.

Aziraphale took a deep breath and willed himself not to panic. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. What he needed was to gather information. He did a quick lap of the room, trying to find any deviation in the stretch of wall. There was none. He circled the room twice more and then sat down with a sharp exhalation, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles.

Okay. He was in a place, in Heaven. It was an ambient temperature, not that it mattered much. Aziraphale was clothed for the cold winter day in London and the pervasive chill in the front room of the bookshop. He didn’t relish the idea of taking off a layer of clothing here, for some reason, but he was a bit warm.

But maybe he could do something about that. Aziraphale focused on the temperature and after a few moments it was cool. He smiled, then frowned as he had a thought. Maybe he should just… make a room. Since he found this one so uncomfortable for so many reasons.

It took several attempts to smooth out all the details but soon Aziraphale had turned the space around him into a facsimile of a room he’d been to often, one of the Reading Rooms in The British Library. It seemed odd to see it so empty, but he could probably not have filled it with people even if he’d wished. The only thing that remained was the same unnaturally bright light, which he evidently had no control over. Ah, well.

“Are you done playing with the interior decorating?” A clipped voice asked, and Aziraphale jumped.

“Gabriel!” The archangel was seated at a desk several down from where Aziraphale was standing, looking perfectly at ease. Aziraphale wouldn’t have admitted it if his life depended on it, but he was a little relieved to see him, because it meant they were finally getting to why he was here and therefore moving closer to when he could leave again.

“Aziraphale.” Gabriel said in a bored tone. Aziraphale waited several moments for him to continue, and when he didn’t, walked to sit at the desk next to him.

“Tell me why I’m here, then.” He said. “I’m sure you’re just dying to knock me down a few pegs.”

Gabriel turned slowly and surveyed Aziraphale with a calm neutrality that made Aziraphale faintly uncomfortable. “Why you’re here?” He said after a time. “Surely you know why you’re here.”

Aziraphale tutted. “I have my suspicions, of course, but… listen, Gabriel, this could go a lot more smoothly for both of us if you would cut to the point for once. I know it isn’t your style, but—”

Gabriel raised a hand to silence him. “No, Aziraphale, I want to hear _you_  say it. Why do  _you_  think you are here?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. Didn’t some human culture have laws against self-incriminating statements? Not that it mattered. They were far beyond the reaches of human laws here. “I suppose… if I were to guess… because of Crowley.”

Gabriel’s expression didn’t change. “How, precisely, do you think this is Crowley’s fault?”

“It isn’t! Crowley hasn’t done anything wrong, and neither have I.” Aziraphale said, feeling a rush of something powerful and protective run through him at the idea that someone from his side might go after Crowley.

Gabriel lifted a hand and began cleaning dirt from under his nails, a mannerism that struck Aziraphale as uncomfortably familiar but out of place on Gabriel. “Ah. So it’s you who are responsible for your current predicament.”

“To what are you referring?” Aziraphale said, dodging.

“What do you think?”

“I think I don’t want to deal with a sophistic interrogation right now.” Aziraphale said, a touch testily. Ordinarily such a statement would have made Gabriel laugh, patronizing, but now it just caused him to look up at Aziraphale with an expression of disdain.

“How unfortunate.” Gabriel said. He resumed cleaning his nails. “What do you think you’ve done wrong with regards to the demon Crowley?”

“I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong.” Aziraphale snapped. “Loving someone isn’t wrong. Moving in with someone isn’t wrong. The war is over, or it never happened, but in either case nobody’s been in touch with me for months. You can’t blame me for trying to make some sort of sense of it all with somebody else.”

“Ah.” Gabriel said, and then was silent for so long Aziraphale wanted to scream. His hands were clenched into fists, digging little half-moons into his soft palms, and it registered all of a sudden that he’d never seen Gabriel pay any particular attention to his nails but he himself had often sat exactly the way the archangel was sitting and done exactly what he was now doing.

“You’re not even Gabriel, are you?” Aziraphale’s anger flashed out in an instant, replaced with a prickling sensation of fear.

“Oh no, I’m not the real Gabriel.” The figure that looked like Gabriel said. “Your subconscious mind associates certain feelings and thoughts with him, though, so this is how I look.”

“Who are you?” Aziraphale asked. He resisted the urge to lean forward and look at not-Gabriel more closely.

“A test.”

“A test of  _what_?”

Gabriel smiled, cool and unconcerned. “You.”

 

Crowley settled on the couch and let his eyes wander over to the sliding glass door that led onto the porch. It was snowing. Great, fluffy flakes were clumping together on the railing. He wondered idly if he’d have to go pick up Aziraphale when he left the bookshop. The angel disliked the cold a great deal less than he did but he was still no huge fan of walking in the snow nor of travelling on the tube in the winter.

Crowley watched the snow, thinking, not for the first time, that he’d really have rather both he and Aziraphale stayed in bed for the day. But Aziraphale had been insistent he needed to check up on the shop, and Crowley had learned long, long ago when Aziraphale was in a mood to be argued with and when he might as well be talking to a brick wall in trying, so he’d waved him off with an irritated sound and promise of dinner when he returned. He hadn’t said what was so important, but Aziraphale was like that sometimes, forgetful and brusque. Most likely he was expecting some new manuscript in the mail.

The snow piled up outside, and Crowley stayed where he was, hypnotized by the steadily whitening landscape. London would be running behind this afternoon. People would be alternately irritated and charmed as they stumbled out of their offices and other places of employment and found their cars buried, the buses running behind schedule, the tube crowded and full of people in thick coats and scarves. Everything slowed down when it snowed, and Crowley loved it. He’d have loved it even more if somebody else had been there with him, cuddled together, cut off from the world by the cold and the quiet of winter. An eternity of quiet contentment with Aziraphale.

Crowley got up to look in the pantry and see about making dinner, blissfully unaware that Aziraphale would not be back to eat it with him.

 

Aziraphale rubbed a hand over his face, thinking. “Alright, you’re not actually Gabriel, and I set this room up, so presumably…” Aziraphale squinted at not-Gabriel very hard.

“You can't force me to change shape, no.” Gabriel said idly. “You’re stuck with this face until there’s reason for it to change.”

“The reason is that I don’t want to look at it anymore!” Aziraphale exclaimed, losing patience.

“This will get you nowhere.” Not-Gabriel said.

“Fine.” Aziraphale snapped. “Fine. Tell me what I have to do next.”

“Only you know what you have to do next.”

"Very helpful." Aziraphale let out a long sigh and sat back down at the desk diagonal from Gabriel’s. He didn’t trust himself not to try and smack the figure if he resumed sitting beside him. “I truly don't, you’ll have to give me some sort of clue.”

“You know all you need to.” Gabriel said, his tone bored again. He uncrossed his legs and smoothed out the wrinkles that had formed on his pants as he stood up. He wandered over to a shelf and pulled a book down apparently at random before returning to his seat and opening it.

“Okay.” Aziraphale nodded. “You want to know why I think I’m here, yes?”

Gabriel didn’t look up from his book. “Yes.”

“I think I’m here because Heaven is ridiculous, has ridiculous rules and expectations, and I can never keep up with them.” He swallowed. “I have to assume the summons I received was to discuss some sort of punishment for both my relationship with Crowley and the fact that I am somewhat…” Aziraphale swallowed again, looking up at the rows of books he’d used to fill this place, “lacking in certain virtues.”

“And which virtues are those?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Obedience, maybe.”

“No.” Gabriel said levelly. “Heaven doesn't want obedience, Aziraphale, that's only what you tell yourself.”

He was right, Aziraphale thought with a grimace. “Humility, then.”

“Closer.”

“…compassion?”

“You know that is untrue.”

Aziraphale wanted to scream. “I don’t know what you want from me! What could you possibly be gaining from this?”

Gabriel sighed and snapped his book shut. “Nobody will gain anything from this if you do not try harder.”

“I can’t!” He said, standing up and turning to pace the room. His voice echoed through the vaulted ceiling, reverberating back to him, shrill and strained to his own ears.

“You can. You’re almost there. What is it about this process that brought out this particular archangel's face?” Gabriel asked, tilting his head to the side and peering at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale looked at him without really seeing, thinking. He had said this was a test and that he’s chosen Gabriel because of the associations Aziraphale had with him. What did Gabriel always make him feel?

“Inadequate.” Aziraphale said at last, his voice a little hollow. “Gabriel always makes me feel inadequate.”

“In what way?”

“Gabriel  _believes_  in what he’s doing. In Heaven.” Aziraphale corrected himself. “So I suppose that makes the virtue I lack faith.” He let out a little laugh, leaning back against a bookshelf. “Is this to determine whether I fall?” He asked. “Is that what this is about?”

Gabriel didn’t answer, turning and walking back to the shelf where he’d taken his book. He put it back and gave the book next to it a little nudge, lining them up so the spines were perfectly straight along the shelf. Then he turned back to Aziraphale, who recoiled.

Gabriel was gone, his face, his clothes, his body… it had all shifted and resettled into Crowley.

“Don't.” Aziraphale’s voice cracked slightly. He didn’t care. “Please don’t… I don’t want to look at him here.”

“You love me.” Said the figure in Crowley’s soft drawl, the tone that made Aziraphale think of drinking in the bookshop and the quiet, comfortable moments after they’d made love but before they’d succumbed to sleep. “Why shouldn’t you want to see my face?”

“Not like this.” Aziraphale cast around for something else to look at, but the figure was stalking closer, the same way Aziraphale had watched Crowley move towards him so many times, with his heart pounding and his face growing hot.

“Do you _believe_  you should fall for this?” not-Crowley murmured, stopping just out of Aziraphale’s reach and looking at him with a teasing expression.

“No.” Aziraphale said emphatically. “Loving someone isn’t wrong. Loving Crowley _can’t_  be wrong.”

“Can’t it?”

“Hastur and Ligur. Uriel and Raphael.” Aziraphale snapped, looking back up with a glare. “Crowley and I are nowhere near the first who have... and besides, we were all angels originally, weren't we?”

“That’s not why it’s different and you know that, angel.” The figure smirked all of a sudden, and it was so achingly  _Crowley_  that Aziraphale’s heart clenched in his chest. “It’s different because of what the two of you did last August."

Aziraphale ground his teeth. They were treading in circles, around Aziraphale's failures as an angel and his failures where Crowley was concerned. "You'll have to be more specific."

"He loves you." Crowley said, stepping close, backing Aziraphale flush against the bookshelf behind him. "He's always loved you, and you waited until you thought the world was going to end to try to reach out to him." Crowley's breath was warm on Aziraphale's face, pushing his hips against him.

“Please, be someone else.” Aziraphale begged, looking at some spot over his shoulder.

“I can’t. This is who I need to be right now.” He rolled his hips, and Aziraphale closed his eyes, silently wishing he had given in to Crowley's attempts to get him to stay in bed earlier in the day. He might be with the real Crowley, his Crowley, right now, and not in Heaven playing some sort of mind game with this  _thing_  that had the ability to look like whatever would make Aziraphale most uncomfortable. He was trapped now, by his unwillingness to hurt the demon as well as by his obligations to Heaven. “You know why you're here and it has nothing to do with making an effort, or temptation, or even falling, angel.”

 

“Stop it.” Aziraphale held his breath, forcing himself to think coolly, detachedly. Could he snap Crowley's neck if properly motivated? Could he kill this  _thing_  and run?

Aziraphale shivered as the figure’s—Crowley’s—hot mouth pressed against his pulse. He gasped and pushed it away.

"Why are you so upset about this? Weren't you just thinking how much you'd rather be in his bed than here?" 

"I shouldn't have to deal with this." Aziraphale said, almost frantic. "If you want to punish me, go ahead, cast me out of Heaven, turn me into a human, but stop this. What more do you want from me?" 

"I want to hear from you. What is it about Crowley that made you keep him at arm's length for so long and why did you change your mind?"

“Maybe I think I don’t deserve him.” Aziraphale snapped, trying not to look at or think about the  _thing_  in the body of his demon, indistinguishable from Crowley except by his behavior. "He's loved me for a long time, yes, but what have I ever done to—" Aziraphale's voice broke and he stopped talking, closing his eyes for a moment.

Not-Crowley crossed his arms, looking at Aziraphale with a satisfied smile, and slowly, slowly, he backed away. Aziraphale let out a breath of relief.

“Go on.” The thing said.

“What  _are_  you?” Aziraphale spat.

“I already told you. A test.” It smiled, a parody of the same fondly encouraging smile Crowley gave him so often these days. “Go on. Tell me the rest.”

Aziraphale swallowed, took a shaky breath, and looked up at the ceiling. It was still so bright, the artificial light filtering in through the windows of the dome above. So unlike the sun through the roof in the real British Library. “We’ve been on Earth the longest.” He began. “I always thought he was different from other demons and then as time went on he made me think... well, what if he wasn't? What if I was just wrong about Heaven?"

“And..?” The thing prompted, and Aziraphale laughed, all bitterness at the situation and contempt for his past self.

“I've known for years that we... that we feel something for each other. And I never acted on it because I was too afraid of what that would mean about the way I think about the war, and Heaven and Hell, and... well, all of it.” Aziraphale closed his eyes again. “I wouldn’t have tried to stop the apocalypse without him and he wouldn’t have… he wouldn’t have changed our relationship if I hadn’t prompted it afterwards.”

“Well, well.” The voice had changed, and Aziraphale opened his eyes again to see himself standing before him, arms crossed and a slightly puzzled look on his face.

“What is this?” Aziraphale demanded. “Why are you…” he waved a hand, and the other Aziraphale shrugged.

“It’s always just been you here. Surely you must have noticed that you filled this blank place with yourself?”

“And part of me looks like Crowley, does he?” Aziraphale scoffed.

“Isn’t that exactly the problem, dear boy?” The other Aziraphale gave him a small, sad smile. “So much of us is him. Except for our nearly pathological fear of failure, that’s Gabriel.”

“But that means I’m not in any danger!” Aziraphale said triumphantly, rising from his chair. “Did I pass the test? May I leave?”

The other Aziraphale smiled again, and this smile was not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. “Not just yet.”

 

When Aziraphale didn’t come home in the evening Crowley’s first thought was that he’d been snowed in, and so he called the bookshop. Nobody picked up, but it wasn’t impossible that the lines were down; London had gotten nearly two feet in eight hours.

The roads were too bad to drive but that didn’t stop Crowley or the Bentley. He made it to Aziraphale’s shop in record time and flung the door of the Bentley open in an instant when he saw all the lights were off.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted as he unlocked the door and stepped inside. It was like ice in the main room, Crowley thought with a shiver, his mind flashing inevitably to another time he’d entered this building to find it devoid of a certain angel, although it had been significantly warmer on that occasion. Brushing off the echoing of a poem about fire and ice, he strode through the building to the back room, and, finding it empty, ran up the stairs to the flat above. Aziraphale wasn’t in the bedroom or sitting room upstairs, either.

Crowley returned to the main room, breathing hard. He couldn’t think where else Aziraphale could have gone or why he wouldn’t have told him first. He was ignoring his mobile, as well, which might have been normal a year ago but was decidedly not now.

And then Crowley saw it, sitting by the till, unfurling slightly and with the ribbon still attached by a bit of wax. Crowley snatched up the scroll of paper and scanned it quickly, feeling his insides turn to lead.

He shoved the scroll in his pocket and hurried back out of the bookshop, closing the door with a slam that shook the square glass panels near the top.

 

Aziraphale whimpered as the thing that looked like him approached again. His face was covered in small cuts and bruises by now and he was bleeding from three separate wounds on his chest. He was fairly sure his wrist was broken, and most of the feathers on his left wing had been ripped out painfully. The wing hurt to move, so he tried his best to keep it still despite the other's constant attempts to tear at it. He’d stopped thinking about their surroundings a long time ago so they were back in the white room. Specks of blood covered the floor.

“Why are you doing this?” Aziraphale asked, trying to keep the pleading tone out of his voice and failing.

The thing—no, Aziraphale thought, not the thing. This was  _him_ , the bottom layer of a matryoshka, a part he didn’t like to think about and would have preferred to pretend wasn’t there. He responded with an expression of weariness that Aziraphale hated for its familiarity.

“Because you think you deserve it.”

 

Somehow the Bentley got Crowley home in one piece, and somehow he made it back up to his flat, but that was about all the usefulness he could summon. He stared down at the crumpled paper in his hand, at a complete loss for what to do.

There were so very, very many reasons Aziraphale could still be in Heaven. The angel had always complained that Upstairs had just as many problems with bureaucracy as Hell, and Crowley wouldn’t put it past them to have a meeting that lasted a week. But it was also reasonably possible that Aziraphale was receiving some kind of punishment or sentence for everything that had happened since Crowley had left a baby at a hospital nearly twenty years ago.

 _Adam,_  Crowley thought, the idea rising up through the haze of apprehension that had gripped him. Maybe Adam could help.

Would he, though? Crowley didn’t know if the boy—nearly a man now—would remember or care about either one of them, let alone be willing to go against Heaven if Aziraphale did in fact need rescuing. He was the son of the  _devil_ , after all. Maybe that witch could help, what had been her name? Anathema? Or, if the worst came to the worst, Crowley could go up there and get him himself. He tried to envision a scenario in which storming the gates of Heaven on his own ended well for him, and failed miserably.

There was always a chance, however slim, that Crowley was just overreacting, and if that were the case he ought to give Aziraphale at least a day or so to come home before he got himself permanently killed trying to get past St. Peter. With a helpless look around the flat, Crowley resigned himself to a very long night of waiting.

Time seemed to have slowed down in the peculiar way it had always done when Crowley couldn’t sleep and wanted it desperately to be tomorrow. He paced the flat, he stress-baked a loaf of bread, he reorganized all of his music by date of birth of the artist. And still, it remained dark and cold. Crowley wanted to scream.

And then he thought, unavoidably, of another time he’d been stuck in this flat, waiting, without Aziraphale. What should he have done during the last two days of the world? At the time, it had been fear and panic that had forced him into a frenzy of planning and restless activity, but now he couldn’t help but wonder if it hadn’t been a distraction from the fact that Aziraphale wasn’t there. That the angel apparently didn’t want to spend what might have been the last two days in the world with him.

With a cut off sob, Crowley threw down an Otis Redding album and hurried to the sliding door. He stepped out into the night without a backwards glance. Wings unfurled as Crowley flung himself into the winter sky.

Getting into Heaven was a great deal easier than Crowley would have assumed. He simply walked up to the front desk and asked if the angel at the desk could give him any information on where Aziraphale was. The fellow didn’t even ask him to fill out any paperwork or wait while he verified something with his superiors, as would surely have happened in Hell. He just told Crowley to take the door off to the side of the desk and follow the hallway to the end before turning left. Crowley did, defenses on high alert but also hoping against hope that this was going to be as simple as just walking in and taking Aziraphale back.

The directions he’d been given at the front desk did indeed lead him right to Aziraphale, and Crowley felt himself seize up in horror at the sight of him.

Aziraphale was curled on the floor of an empty white room, hands covering his head, blood staining his clothes and face. His wings were spread out, feathers missing in patches, one at an awkward angle. He was shivering violently.

Crowley knelt down beside him, feeling anger and heartache and bitterness at all the hosts of Heaven for whatever twisted idea of justice had been enacted here. And they had the audacity to pretend they were any different from Hell. “Angel?” Crowley said, very softly, laying a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. Aziraphale flinched away from his touch.

“Angel, it’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.” Aziraphale gave no sign of having heard him apart from curling more tightly in on himself. “I’m going to take you home.”

“No.” Aziraphale croaked, his voice very hoarse.

Crowley stopped in the process of reaching out to pull the angel into an upright position. “You need help, Aziraphale.”

“You’re not here.” He whimpered. “It’s just me, alone.”

Crowley’s heart broke at the waver in his voice, the way he shook, which Crowley could now see was the force of him crying. Aziraphale didn’t cry often, and witnessing it had always made Crowley feel small and useless. “I  _am_  here.” He swallowed, sizing up the extent of Aziraphale’s injuries and trying to determine if he was in a physical state to make a run for it if necessary. “I’m here, you’re not alone.”

“Please stop.” Aziraphale sobbed. “Please. Be somebody else. I can’t… not him again.”

Crowley ran a gentle hand through the feathers on Aziraphale’s unbroken wing, and the angel’s breath hitched. “I promise you’re safe now. I won’t leave you alone.” After several moments Aziraphale’s crying subsided, and he looked up at Crowley for the first time.

“Crowley?”

“Yes, angel, who else would it be?” Crowley tried to smile but caught sight of the bloody gashes on Aziraphale’s face and felt himself wince in sympathy instead.

“You’re really here?”

“I’m here to take you home, yes.” Crowley repeated. Aziraphale struggled to stand and Crowley caught his weight with ease. The leaned against each other for a moment, Aziraphale’s forehead on Crowley’s shoulder, Crowley cupping the back of his neck and holding him as close as he could without aggravating any of his injuries.

“I can’t fly.” Aziraphale said, his voice distant and defeated.

“I’ll carry you, then.” Crowley said, fierce as he ran a hand down Aziraphale’s back, cataloguing the damage to his wings as surreptitiously as he could.

“Dear boy…” Aziraphale murmured, sounding absolutely exhausted.

“I’ll do whatever needs done, angel. I’ll take care of you.”

 

Getting out of Heaven was not any more difficult than getting in had been, at least not when it came to the rest of the Heavenly hosts. The one at the desk let them go without even a glance, and as soon as Crowley had managed to get an arm around Aziraphale and his weight shifted onto him, not even flying was very difficult. They made it back to Crowley’s flat as the sun was rising, and Crowley ushered him into the bathroom to examine him more closely.

Aziraphale was absolutely covered in injuries. Scabbed over cuts and bruises and deeper welts criss-crossed his exposed skin, and his clothes were ragged and bloodied on him. He had a glazed over look, not fully conscious, but when Crowley reached out to touch him, he flinched awake. For a moment they stared at each other, Crowley’s eyes wide in mingled concern and sympathy. Then Aziraphale got up with a speed that seemed to hurt him and fled from the room.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley called after him, throwing himself around the corner of the bathroom door and making to follow.

Aziraphale was rushing out of the flat through the sliding glass door. As soon as he was on the porch he wrenched his broken wing into place with a cry, and then he took off, and Crowley watched him fly away with his heart aching, looking at Aziraphale’s bedraggled feathers and the way he was favoring one side as he flew.

There were only two places he would go, and somehow Crowley didn’t think he was in the state of mind to sit on the dome of St Paul’s. Crowley hurried back to the bookshop and made his way upstairs, wincing at the trail of snow and periodic drops of blood the angel had tracked across the carpet.

Crowley made to enter the bedroom and found it was locked.  
Aziraphale?” He called through the heavy dark wood, unable and unwilling to keep the concern out of his voice.

“Go away, Crowley.” Aziraphale called back. His voice sounded scratchy, like he’d worn it out somehow. The image of Aziraphale screaming in pain rose in Crowley’s mind, and he laid a palm against the door.

“No. I’ll miracle it open but I’d rather you let me in.”

There was a shuffling inside, followed by a muffled, pained sort of sound. “I’ve warded it.”

“Aziraphale.” Crowley said, very frustrated. “Let me in.”

“No.”

“Are you at least healing yourself in there?”

There was no answer.

“Angel?” He pounded on the door. “Angel, what’s going on?”

“I don’t want company just now so I’d appreciate it if you could—” there was a sharp intake of breath.

“You need help.” Crowley said, an odd calm settling into his voice, at complete odds with the panic he was beginning to feel.

“I shouldn’t.” Came Aziraphale’s choked voice.

“What do you mean, you shouldn’t?” Crowley said, incredulous and worried. “You shouldn’t need help?”

The springs of the ancient bed in the room creaked, and Aziraphale’s next words were muffled enough that Crowley was sure he’d lain down and pressed his face into the pillow. “I should never have allowed us to get so close.”

Crowley laughed. He couldn’t help it, the sentiment was just so patently absurd. “What did they _do_  to you up there, Aziraphale?”

“Why are you here?” Aziraphale asked desperately, sounding like he was clinging to the edge of something to avoid a great and terrible fall. Crowley’s nails scratched along the wood as he leaned his forehead against the door.

 “Because I love you and you love me. And that involves looking out for each other. Now let me _in_.” Crowley pounded on the door again, and tried to miracle the lock open. It didn’t budge.

“No,” Aziraphale muttered. “No, I’ve been… so stupid. We’ve both been so stupid. You need to leave.”

Crowley could feel the want radiating off the angel from twenty feet away, the want to be comforted, to be soothed, to be _held_. “Aziraphale.” Crowley said, very quietly. Aziraphale, with his supernatural hearing, couldn’t have missed it, even through the heavy wood door. “Wanting to be cared for isn’t stupid. It’s…” his palm pressed flat along the grain of the wood. “Human.” His throat felt tight as he bit back tears of his own. “It’s human.”

He could hear Aziraphale gasping through his tears on the other side of the door, could almost see the way he was shaking apart, and Crowley wanted to scream at how ill-equipped he was to deal with this.

“Angel, please.” Crowley whispered. “Please let me help.”

There was a sniffing sound, and a shuffling, and the lock clicked in the door. Crowley pushed his way into the room and wrapped Aziraphale in his arms, doing his best to avoid the worst of his injuries as he pulled the angel into a hug. Aziraphale took a deep breath, and then another, and then he slumped against Crowley, who caught him and guided him back to the bed.

“Tell me who did this.” Crowley asked, very quietly, as he arranged the angel on his stomach and nudged his shoulders, prompting Aziraphale to spread his wings so Crowley could get a look at them. He let them out slowly, very evidently in pain, and Crowley glared down at the damage, taking it in fully for the first time. Most of his primary feathers were gone and his left wing had been broken and then reset hastily as Aziraphale had fled the flat. Crowley’s mind flashed back to a dove crushed in the sleeve of a coat. “Who did this, Aziraphale, I swear I’ll kill them.”  

Aziraphale didn’t answer, except to let out a small sob as Crowley straightened his injured wing and ran his fingers through the downy inner layer, which began to fill back out. Bones knit and feathers grew back under Crowley’s touch, and when it was finished Crowley placed a kiss between Aziraphale’s shoulder blades. “Pull them back in and turn over, angel.”

He did, and Crowley vanished his clothes so he could get a better look at the rest of his injuries. Whatever had happened Up There, Aziraphale was clearly feeling too poorly to fix himself, but that was alright. Crowley had always been rather better at healing than befitted a demon. “At least tell me what happened.”

“Do you need to know?” Aziraphale asked, his voice still terribly empty.

“ _Yes_.” Crowley said emphatically. He ran a hand up Aziraphale’s arm and over his chest, watching cuts seal and welts recede into sensitive skin. When his touch moved down the other arm Aziraphale winced, and Crowley realized his wrist was broken. He took Aziraphale’s hand as he healed it, fingertips tracing over the hollow where ulna met carpal bones. Aziraphale met his eyes for the first time and Crowley did his best to smile, feeling desperately protective of the hesitant warmth returning to Aziraphale’s expression.

Aziraphale blinked at him, a few more tears leaking from under his lashes as Crowley healed his face. He stroked the gashes on his cheek and his split lip and the bruises on his forehead and jaw, like he’d been slammed face-first into a wall. When he kissed his nose Aziraphale jumped, and Crowley’s heart broke again.

“Aziraphale, please.” Crowley whispered against his temple, planting a kiss there as he finished returning his face to a whole and unblemished state. “I want to know what happened.”

Aziraphale told him.

The only thing that kept Crowley from going incandescent with rage was the surety that it would hurt Aziraphale more than it would help himself. Instead he swallowed, closed his eyes, and nudged Aziraphale to scoot over in the narrow bed so Crowley could lay down beside him.

“Listen to me,” He said, quiet but firm, “I don’t know what kind of… what kind of  _creature_  decides that putting you in a room alone and manifesting things that scare you about yourself is anything but torture, but whatever you think you learned up there is wrong.”

Aziraphale looked at him as though from across a great distance, although they were practically nose to nose. He hadn’t let go of Crowley’s hand, and Crowley had the horrible thought that it was all that was holding Aziraphale in place at the moment, so he pulled the blankets out from under them and covered them both, moving as close as he could and pulling the angel to him. Aziraphale let out a shaky sigh and settled against his chest, tucking his head under Crowley’s chin. His hair tickled Crowley’s nose and Crowley kissed the crown of his head.

“They said it was a test.” Aziraphale muttered, the words warm against Crowley’s neck. He squeezed Aziraphale’s shoulders. “I must have passed, although there’s nothing truly stopping me from falling now as opposed to twelve hours ago, I suppose.”

Crowley’s grip on Aziraphale’s shoulders tightened and he ran a hand down his back. “Aziraphale.” He said, unable to keep the fierce edge out of his voice and soothing Aziraphale when he winced. “It doesn’t matter whether Heaven thinks you’re good or not. You  _are_.”

“Are you really qualified to say?”

“Who else has known you as long as I have?” Crowley said with a snort. “The way I see it, I’m the only one.” Aziraphale murmured his assent. “And that isn’t wrong, or the real problem, whatever you think you should feel about it. We haven’t done something wrong by caring for each other.”

“Ineffable.” Aziraphale said, still in that empty tone. Crowley kissed his forehead.

“Most people find fatalism sort of romantic, you know.” Crowley told him, unable to keep the teasing tone out of his voice. “Soulmates or destiny or whatever.”

“Yes, well. Most people aren’t six thousand year old beings on opposite sides of a cosmic war.” He murmured, less distant than before.

Crowley laughed, and Aziraphale clung to him, holding his breath. “Haven’t I been saying for years we’ve always had the choice? We chose each other.”

The thing he couldn’t explain, couldn’t make sense out of with words, was that they might have six millennia of inertia behind them, but when you zoomed in every moment of that eternity was a series of choices, and Crowley had been choosing Aziraphale and Aziraphale choosing Crowley since the beginning. It wasn’t the length of time that mattered, it was the moment in Sumeria where Crowley had warned Aziraphale about the oncoming flood, the time in Egypt Aziraphale had told Crowley the plagues were from his side, the Arrangement, the middle ages, the Renaissance, the babies, getting drunk in the bookshop, driving to Tadfield and reaching out a hand. “It wasn’t inevitable, it just looks that way from this side.”

They stayed like that for a long time, holding each other in the twin-sized bed above Aziraphale’s shop, Crowley pretending he didn’t notice the tears soaking the collar of his shirt.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be so…” Aziraphale said after a while, still buried under Crowley’s chin.

“What?”

The answer was very quiet when it came. “Fragile.”

Crowley laughed. “Aziraphale, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

“No, my dear.” Aziraphale said, a smile in his voice, and Crowley felt, at last, that things might be okay, if Aziraphale’s voice was back to it’s usual warm tone. “That was always you.”

 


End file.
